The front of the Supreme Court building and the famous words "Equal Justice Under Law" above the pillars.

The Supreme Court just upheld a federal law that prevents people with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions from owning guns. The justices voted 6-2, with Justice Clarence Thomas filing a dissent and Justice Sonia Sotomayor joining that dissent in part.

The case, Voisine v. United States, centered on two Maine men who argued that their past domestic violence convictions shouldn't limit their constitutional rights to bear arms. One of the men pleaded guilty to assaulting his girlfriend in 2004, and the other pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife in 2008. Both men were caught owning guns several years later—something that's federally prohibited for anyone who's been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor.

The men took the case to the Supreme Court to argue that they shouldn't be subject to this limitation. They said that both of their prior convictions could have been based on reckless—not intentional or conscious—conduct, and that this recklessness should exempt them from this gun ownership ban. SCOTUS had seen a similar case, United States v. Castleman, in 2014, where a man argued against this federal ban as a whole (saying his past with domestic violence shouldn't keep him from owning a gun at all). The court upheld the law then, but didn't make it clear if it applied to cases of reckless domestic violence—leaving a loophole for the men in Voisine v. United States to make their argument. In an attempt to close this loophole, SCOTUS fully upheld the law—in cases of reckless and intentional conduct—barring convicted domestic abusers from owning laws.

According to the nonprofit organization Everytown, more intimate partner homicides have been committed in the U.S. over the last 25 years with guns than all other weapons combined. People with a history of committing domestic violence are five times more likely to subsequently murder an intimate partner when a firearm is in the house, and more than half the women killed by guns in the U.S. in 2011 were killed by an intimate partner.

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said the court made its decision to "prohibit domestic abusers convicted under run-of-the-mill misdemeanor assault and battery laws from possessing guns," and that making an exception for misdemeanors would "substantially undermine the provision's design."